For an example of the disgraceful attack on Patricia
Smith, see the article: “A tale of two grieving parents” by Steve Benen posted
on the MSNBC website.

Even more egregious, Hillary Clinton called Smith a liar during a Democratic Party debate on March 9, 2016, then double down on that disgusting attack during an
interview on July 31, 2016 on FOX News.

Articles about the attacks on Smith by the
liberal media and Clinton are shown below.

Further below is an article by Allen West which
demonstrates that Khizr Khan’s speech during the Democratic Party Convention assailing Donald Trump was unfair and unjustified, since Trump had nothing to do with the death of Khan's son in Iraq and had never said one word about Khan's son prior to the Democratic Party's Convention.

_______________

Hillary Called Benghazi Mom a Liar, But Media Freak Out
over Trump on Muslim Parents

By Joel B. Pollak

July 30, 2016

Donald Trump is embroiled in another media controversy,
this time over his reaction when asked about the emotional speech at the
Democratic National Convention by the bereaved parents of Capt. Humayun Khan,
an immigrant soldier who died in Iraq in 2004.

As noted on Breitbart News, Kahn’s speech was a powerful
rebuke, though factually incorrect: the Constitution does not bar religious
tests for immigrants, for example.

'I can't imagine the grief she has about losing her son.
But she's wrong. She's absolutely wrong.'

During Wednesday night’s democratic debate, Hillary
Clinton said the mother of a Benghazi victim lied.

Patricia Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, one of the four
Americans who were killed by terrorists in an attack on the U.S. consulate in
Benghazi during Clinton’s tenure, said in a CNN interview last October that
Clinton lied to her about the circumstances surrounding her son’s death.

Instead of stating that her son’s death had been caused
by an act of terrorism, Clinton blamed an inflammatory video that had been
circulating online in the weeks leading up to the attack — a narrative she knew
at the time to be false.

When asked about this on Wednesday, Clinton pushed back
at Smith’s claim, saying the mother of the Benghazi victim was “absolutely
wrong.”

“I and everybody in the [Obama] administration, all the
people she named — the president, the vice president, Susan Rice — we were
scrambling to get information that was changing literally by the hour,” she
said. “When we had information, we made it public, but then sometimes we had to
go back and say we had new information that contradicts it.”

During Clinton’s tenure as secretary of State, a U.S.
consulate in Benghazi was attacked on Sept. 11, 2012. In the aftermath of the
attack, Clinton and other members of the Obama administration blamed the attack
on an inflammatory video that had been circulating at the time.

At the casket ceremony for the Benghazi victims, Clinton
repeated this line of rhetoric, saying:

“This
has been a difficult week for the State Department and for our country. We’ve
seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those
brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an
awful internet video that we had nothing to do with. It is hard for the
American people to make sense of that because it is senseless, and it is totally
unacceptable.”

But in an email she sent to her daughter Chelsea just hours
after the attack, Hillary Clinton said the terrorist attack had been carried
out by an “Al Queda-like group,” implying she knew it had been premeditated
terrorism.

As The Federalistreported in October, Hillary’s own e-mail correspondence
shows that from day one Clinton had two different stories surrounding the cause
of the Benghazi attack. Under her leadership, the State Department pushed out a
false, and politically advantageous, narrative to the American people blaming
an Internet video, while privately acknowledging that the events in Benghazi
were purely motivated by organized Islamic terrorism.

"Mr. Khan, I grieve for the loss of
your son. However, I grieve even more that you used his sacrifice and loss as
nothing more than a politicized stunt. May God forgive you for it."

Everyone’s talking about the speech delivered by Mr.
Khizr Khan, accompanied by his wife Ghazala at the DNC that focused on the loss
of his son, U.S. Army Captain Humayan Khan.

It appears things have devolved into such a level of
immaturity relating to the speech that I believe there’s a need for a clear
analysis of Mr. Khan’s address, and what he should have presented.

First, let me offer my condolences to the Khan family for
their sacrifice, as they are now an American Gold Star Family. Their son and I
share an unbreakable bond. We both served our nation and, along with three
other generations in my family, took the oath to support and defend our
Constitution and served in combat zones.

Yes sir, Mr. Khan, I’ve read our Constitution and firmly
recognize the preeminent responsibility of our federal government is to
“provide for the common defense.” I also comprehend the relationship between
the three branches of government…you know separation of powers, checks and
balances, coequal branches of government.

I would offer a simple recommendation to Mr. Khan.
Perhaps you should have asked President Barack Obama if he had read the
Constitution — undoubtedly you would agree we have witnessed a few
unconstitutional actions from him.

And while you were at it, Mr. Khan, perhaps you could
have asked Hillary Clinton about handling classified information — since I’m
quite sure your son, Captain Khan, had at a minimum a secret clearance.

I don’t think your son would have been able to, well,
have his “careless” mishandling of classified materials and information simply
excused. Perhaps Mr. Khan, you could have addressed the necessity for high
standards of honor, integrity, and character in a commander in chief.

Also, I found it interesting Mr. Khan, that you and your
wife, an American Gold Star family, would take the stage to support a sitting
president and one desiring to be president, who had abandoned Americans in a
combat zone and lied about it.

I tend to believe that if alive, your son would consider
that type of behavior abhorrent and deplorable. Or perhaps, as it seems, your
speech was politically driven, and not based on principle? After all, you did
take the stage before a crowd that disrespected a Medal of Honor recipient…is
that cool with you?

You see, I understand, Mr. Khan, that your son and your
family are Muslim and Muslims do indeed serve in our armed forces. But in the
military I know, we do not celebrate that which divides, but rather that which
unites. And what is it that unites us as Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and
Marines? It is service above self, commitment to something greater than the
individual, and sacrifice for our country and comrades in arms.

Now, let’s be honest Mr. Khan, those of us with knowledge
could just as easily bring attention to SGT Hasan Karim Akbar and Major Nidal
Hasan, both Muslims serving in the U.S. Army. Just as you celebrated your
Muslim son’s sacrifice, there are others who could give testimony to their loss
due to those Muslim soldiers — and I use lower case reference to them
(soldiers) because they dishonored the oath and were traitors to our Code of
Honor. Your son was not, but that had nothing to do with him being a Muslim: he
was an American Soldier.

On Fox News Sunday, Hillary Clinton used her first
post-convention interview to reinforce the major weaknesses of her candidacy.In an election where voters want change, she’s offering a continuation of
the failed status quo and that she is willing to do or say anything – no matter
how dishonest – to get elected. Following Friday’s dismal GDP report, Clinton
was confronted by her lack of fresh economic proposals, and when pressed on the
scandals surrounding her secret email server and conflicts of interest at the
Clinton Foundation, all she offered were the same dishonest talking points. See
the clips from her interview below:

Saturday, July 30, 2016

If Don Surber smokes
he’s lighting a cigar right now because here is Nate silver site
this morning

It’s one thing for a
guy like me or Glenn or Don Surber or Even Rush Limbaugh to tell Democrats that
they are in trouble it’s another thing to be told
this by Nate silver the day after the Democrat convention and a week of the MSM lionizing all they did and said.

If you thought you
saw some low tactics before, given the combination of Clinton & Obama Panic,
you ain’t seen nothing yet. How Donald Trump handles his campaign will make all the
difference.

Friday, July 29, 2016

Conventions are
useful for clarifying elections, and this week’s Philly confab notably so. A
week of speakers—Democrat after Democrat beseeching the nation to please
know that Hillary
Clinton really is a good gal—has made something clear: This is,
essentially, a one-person presidential race.

It’s Hillary against
Hillary.
This November is about whether Americans can look at 40 years of Clinton
chicanery and nearly a decade of broken Obama promises, and still
pull the lever for her. Not that Donald Trump doesn’t matter. He does, in
that he can help sharpen those concerns. But Hillary is the main event.

The polls bear this out.
Aside from his recent convention bump, Mr. Trump’s numbers have been largely
consistent. Whether he leads or trails, and by how much, is mostly a function
of voters’ shifting views on Mrs. Clinton. Lately her poll numbers have been
devastating.

A CNN survey this
week showed 68% of voters say she isn’t honest and trustworthy—an
all-time high. CBSfound virtually the same number: 67%.
In the CNN poll, meanwhile, only 39% of voters said they held a favorable view
of Mrs. Clinton. This is lower than any time CNN has polled Hillary since the
spring of 1992—before she was first lady.

Mr. Trump’s poll
numbers also bear this out. He is currently leading in the Real Clear Politics
average despite no real ground game, little real fundraising, little policy
message, a divided conservative electorate, and one of the messiest conventions
on record. As of June 30, Mrs. Clinton and her allies had raised a stunning
$600 million, which is already being spent to trash Mr. Trump. Yet to
little or no effect. Mr. Trump is hardly a potted plant, but even if he
were . . .

Mrs.
Clinton’s problem is Mrs. Clinton.She is running against her own
ethical morass. Already she was asking voters to forget about cattle
futures and fake sniper fire and Whitewater and Travelgate. Then she chose to
vividly revive the public nausea with her self-serving email stunt and her
Clinton Foundation money grubbing.

Oh, she tried to roll
out the usual Clinton defense: that this was just part of a renewed attack by
political enemies. Yet the neutral inspector general of the State Department
slammed her handling of official email; the FBI director (who works for Barack
Obama) attested that she was careless with classified information; and she was
caught on tape telling a series of lies about the situation. All of which makes
it tough to blame the vast right-wing conspiracy. Tim Kaine’s many assurances
that he “trusts” Mrs. Clinton was the campaign’s public acknowledgment that
almost no one else in the nation does.

Hillary is running,
too, against the reality of President Obama policies, which she promises
not only to continue, but to build on. The president’s glowing appraisal
Wednesday night of his time in office bore no relation to the country most
Americans see—one in which health care costs more than ever, they struggle to
pay the bills, and terror attacks on Western democracies are a weekly event.
The state of the country might not be quite so grim as Mr. Trump painted it in
Cleveland, but the mood is much closer to that grimness than to Mr. Obama’s
forced optimism.

The president’s
policies, which Mrs. Clinton now owns, have alienated significant tranches of
voters that she needs this fall—in particular blue-collar Democrats. Coal
communities are rejecting Hillary outright. Many union workers are too, whether
they be Teamsters for Trump, or police officers appalled by the Democratic
Party’s attacks on their profession.

Mrs. Clinton is
trying to win back that blue-collar support by moving sharply on issues like
free trade, but she’ll be hard pressed to out-populist Mr. Trump on that score.
Whatever Bill says, Americans do not look at Hillary and see “change”—at least
not the kind of change they are after.

Hillary is also
running against her own party, which has moved left without her. She has chased after
progressives, adopting one position after another from Bernie Sanders, feting Elizabeth Warren,
working “progressive” into every sentence. But this week showed that her
party’s liberal wing is unconvinced, still feeling the Bern. Yes, she has done
some uniting in Philly, and will likely get her own bump. At the same time,
45% of Democrats who voted in the primary told that CNN pollster they still
wish Sanders were the nominee.

Mrs. Clinton will
continue to warn that her opponent is a threat, to try to worry voters enough
that they overcome their misgivings about her. Mr. Trump can certainly make
that job easier for her. Conversely, he can help his own numbers and campaign by
focusing precisely on her vulnerabilities, and by presenting a stronger policy
agenda of his own.

Mrs. Clinton is
ultimately banking that a significant number of Americans won’t be able to vote
for Mr. Trump. Certainly some won’t. But a dislike of Mr. Trump does not imply
a like of Mrs. Clinton—and certainly not a vote for Mrs. Clinton.

‘The best darn change-maker I ever met
in my entire life.” So said Bill Clinton in making the case for his wife at the
Democratic National Convention. Considering that Bernie Sanders ran as the
author of a political revolution and Donald Trump as the man who would “kick
over the table” (to quote Newt Gingrich) in Washington, “change-maker” does not
exactly make the heart race.

Which is the
fundamental problem with the Clinton campaign. What precisely is it about? Why
is she running in the first place?

Like most dynastic
candidates (most famously Ted Kennedy in 1979), she really doesn’t know. She seeks the office
because, well, it’s the next — the final — step on the ladder.

Her campaign’s
premise is that we’re doing okay, but we can do better. There are holes to
patch in the nanny-state safety net. She’s the one to do it.

It amounts to Sanders
lite. Or the short-lived Bush slogan: “Jeb can fix it.” We know where that
went.

The one man who could
have given the pudding a theme, who could have created a plausible Hillaryism
was Bill Clinton. Rather than do that — the way in Cleveland Gingrich shaped
Trump’s various barstool eruptions into a semi-coherent program of national
populism — Bill gave a long chronological account of a passionate liberal’s
social activism. It was an attempt, I suppose, to humanize her.

Well, yes. Perhaps,
after all, somewhere in there is a real person. But what a waste of Bill’s
talents. It wasn’t exactly Clint Eastwood speaking to an empty chair, but at
the end you had to ask: Is that all there is?

He grandly concluded
with this: “The reason you should elect her is that in the greatest country on
earth we have always been about tomorrow.” Is there a rhetorical device more
banal?

Trump’s acceptance
speech was roundly criticized for offering a dark, dystopian vision of America.
For all of its exaggeration, however, it reflected well the view from Fishtown,
the fictional white working-class town created statistically by social
scientist Charles Murray in his 2012 study Coming Apart. It chronicled
the economic, social, and spiritual disintegration of those left behind by
globalization and economic transformation. Trump’s capture of the resultant
feelings of anxiety and abandonment explains why he enjoys an astonishing
39-point advantage over Clinton among whites without a college degree.

His solution is to
beat up on foreigners for “stealing” our jobs. But while trade is a factor in
the loss of manufacturing jobs, even more important, by a large margin, is the
emergence of an information economy in which education, knowledge, and various
kinds of literacy are the coin of the realm. For all the factory jobs lost to
Third World competitors, far more are lost to robots.

Hard to run against
higher productivity. Easier to run against cunning foreigners.

In either case,
Clinton has found no counter. If she has a theme, it’s about expanding
opportunity, shattering ceilings. But the universe of discriminated-against
minorities — so vast 50 years ago — is rapidly shrinking. When the burning
civil-rights issue of the day is bathroom choice for the transgendered, a
flummoxed Fishtown understandably asks, “What about us?” Telling coal
miners she was going to close their mines and kill their jobs only reinforced
white working-class alienation from Clinton.

As for the chaos
abroad, the Democrats are in see-no-evil denial. The first night in
Philadelphia, there were 61 speeches. Not one mentioned the Islamic State or
even terrorism. Later references were few, far between, and highly
defensive. After all, what can the Democrats say? Clinton’s calling card is
experience. Yet as secretary of state she left a
trail of policy failures from Libya to Syria, from the Russian reset to the
Iraqi withdrawal to the rise of the Islamic State.

Clinton had a strong
second half of the convention as the Sanders revolt faded and as President
Obama endorsed her with one of the finer speeches of his career. Yet Trump’s
convention bounce of up to 10 points has given him a slight lead in the
polls. She badly needs one of her own.

She still enjoys the
Democrats’ built-in Electoral College advantage. But she remains highly
vulnerable to both outside events and internal revelations. Another major
terror attack, another e-mail drop — and everything changes.

In this crazy
election year, there are no straight-line projections. As Clinton leaves
Philadelphia, her lifelong drive for the ultimate prize is perilously close to
a coin flip.

In his emotional
speech Wednesday, President Obama promised that “we’re going to carry Hillary
to victory.” To judge from Clinton’s performance last night, being carried
by the party is the only way she’s going to get there.

Instead of giving the
speech of her life on the
biggest night of her life,Clinton delivered an uninspired and
uninspiring wish list of all the things she and other Democrats would get
Washington to do.

Big things, little
things, everything. Her core principle, if it can be called a principle, is
that government is here to take charge, making her theme of “stronger
together” suddenly seem like a warning that her main goal is building an
all-consuming federal bureaucracy.

On top of earlier
vows to issue even more executive orders than Obama, she promises a more
powerful, more intrusive government across the board, with no problem too
big or too small for its focus.

All that “compassion”
would be expensive, meaning higher taxes and more national debt.

She tried to make a
virtue of it, saying, “I sweat the details,” because “if it’s your kid or your
family” that needs help, “it’s a big deal to you, and it should be a big deal
to your president, too.”

At another point, she
pledged that “we will empower Americans to live better lives.”

Individual initiative
apparently would no longer be necessary or admirable. Clinton’s vision
for America is for a Golden Age of Big Government.

The result is that
instead of redefining herself in new and appealing way, she revealed herself to
be much as we already knew her — as somebody who sees no limits to the role
of the federal government. Though she cited the founders several times, she
takes a far different view of America, and of the Constitution and declaration
they wrote.

As the first woman to
win the presidential nomination of a major party, Clinton’s acceptance speech
was a historic event in itself, and the delegates celebrated with her at
several moving moments.

Her main goals, in
addition to bashing, ridiculing and mocking Donald Trump, were to reveal a soft
side and a tough one, as someone who can deliver paid family leave and destroy
Islamic State. She also tried to paint herself as the one candidate who can
unite America.

Great goals for sure,
but there are two major contradictions at the heart of the effort. The first
is the false claim that Clinton represents both the change the nation wants and
the third term of Barack Obama. She can’t be both, yet she pretended she
could be.

The second claim is
that she can unite a divided country. Her history is exactly the opposite, and the polls
showing that nearly 70 percent of Americans find her dishonest and
untrustworthy mean it would take a near miracle for her build a national
consensus on anything of significance.

Her performance
fulfilled the party’s fear that she would be overshadowed by a roster of
political heavyweights at her own convention and waste an opportunity to
reinvent herself. Without doubt, the fourth and final night of the
convention was a letdown.

The result is that
Clinton is not so much leading the Democratic Party as the beneficiary of its
sprawling political cultural, and racial strength. Resembling a European-style
parliamentary leader, she is running like she wants to be a prime minister
selected by her party instead of an American president elected by voters.

That sets up another
risky contrast with Trump. He is a great disrupter, leading the Republican
Party he took over, and is appealing directly to voters to give him a personal
mandate.

At a time when most
of the nation is demanding strong leadership, Trump is in a position to seize a
big advantage. His recent lead in most national polls and the dead heat in key
swing states are largely a testament to his brawling, street-fighter style.

Clinton’s advantages
— superior knowledge of complex issues and extensive government experience —
are more difficult to exploit in a change election. Even the main thrust of the
Dem assault on Trump, that he is reckless and dangerous, while she is steady
and responsible, makes a vote for her sound like a vote for the status quo.

And, as we learned
this week, she is kind, generous and warm, a great friend, a greater mother and
the greatest grandmother. The effort to paint Clinton as both human and
superhuman, ordinary and extraordinary, faces its own inherent problems.

For one thing, the
softness of the image created didn’t so much humanize her as womanize her. Was
there any doubt?

For another, the
over-the-top descriptions were silly exaggerations, which is a very odd way
to get people to trust someone they consider a liar — by telling more lies
about them.

The bid reached its
apex, or nadir, during Chelsea Clinton’s cloying introduction of her mother. Given
mostly in a hushed, reverential tone, it could have been designed to keep
Bernie Sanders’ noisy brigade quiet.

The Wall Street JournalOpinionCommentaryVoters
want change, and nobody in Philly has credibly argued Clinton can deliver.

By
Karl Rove

Though the slogan for
the first day of the Democratic National Convention was “United Together,” the
party appeared to be anything but. Hacked emails dumped online by WikiLeaks had
confirmed the worst suspicions of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s supporters. The
Democratic establishment had been working all along to defeat their man, even
discussing whether to plant stories that Mr. Sanders, who is Jewish, doesn’t
believe in God.

After Democratic
National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced her
resignation, she was rewarded by being named an “honorary chair” for Hillary Clinton’s
campaign. Sanders supporters were hardly satisfied. On Monday the Bernie Bunch
booed Ms. Wasserman Schultz off the stage. They demonstrated their frustration
in the convention hall, and on Philadelphia’s streets, demanding votes on their
candidate’s proposals on trade and the party’s rules.

The following day the
comedian Sarah Silverman admonished Sandernistas from the podium: “To the
Bernie-or-bust people, let me tell you, you are being ridiculous.” Standing at
her side, Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.) nodded as Sanders delegates screamed
their disapproval. The two Hollywood intellectuals were followed on stage by
Paul Simon, who warbled “Bridge Over Troubled Waters.” Convention organizers
should have tried to get the song’s original vocalist, Art Garfunkel.

These expressions of
disaffection from the Democratic Party’s Birkenstock-and-granola wing are
entertaining, yet they are not Team Clinton’s principal strategic challenge.
Sure, some Bernieites could defect to the Green Party’s presidential nominee,
Jill Stein, or even to Donald
Trump. Others might skip the polls and spend Election Day composting.
Still, Mrs. Clinton’s bigger problem is that she personifies the status quo
in a year when the dynamic is strongly tilted toward change.

Gallup reported last weekthat only 17% of Americans are
satisfied with the country’s condition, the same figure as at this point in
2008.

A July 13 NBC/Wall
Street Journal poll foundthat a mere 18% of registered voters believe the country is “headed in the
right direction,” while 73% said things are “off on the wrong track.”

The same survey found
56% favor someone for president “who will bring major changes to the way
government operates even if it is not possible to predict what the changes may
be.” Only 41% back “someone who will bring a steady approach to the way
government operates even if it means fewer changes to how things are now.”

A June 26 Pew
Research Center survey found that 24% of Americans are “satisfied with the way
things are going in this country today”; 71% are “dissatisfied.” Fully 77%
of voters say Mr. Trump would “change the way things work in Washington”
(though only 33% think it would be for the better). Just 45% say Mrs. Clinton
would bring change (and 20% say it would be for the better).

President Bill
Clinton’s speech Tuesday night didn’t significantly alter this dynamic. Even
his political talents couldn’t transform his wife into a “change-agent,” a
phrase he repeatedly invoked. If anything, Mr. Clinton reminded voters that
Mrs. Clinton has been a political fixture for decades.

Nor did Mr. Clinton
do any favors when he described Hillary’s tenure as secretary of state and
asked: “How does this square with the things that you heard at the Republican
convention?” He said Republicans are running against “a cartoon,” thereby
dismissing concerns about private email servers, America’s retreat from global
leadership, the rise of Islamic State, and the disasters in Libya, Syria, Iraq,
Egypt, Russia and beyond.

Speeches Wednesday by
President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were equally
unlikely to help Mrs. Clinton. Instead they added to the impression
that she represents a third term for their policies, especially as far as
they extolled their administration’s record. The more they claim the economy is
good, the country strong, and the world safe, the more disconnected they
appear to swing voters.

The White House is
telling reporters the president will actively campaign for Mrs. Clinton and
Democratic candidates, raising funds starting next week and traveling
throughout October. This will only reinforce that
the race is a choice between the status quo with Mrs. Clinton and change with
Mr. Trump.

Team Clinton’s hope
lies in convincing voters that Mr. Trump will bring only chaos. That’s where
she should put her emphasis Thursday night and after. The Democratic convention
started badly. It’s likely to end that way, too—with the election’s central
dynamic, one that works against their nominee, completely intact.

Mr. Rove helped
organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is the author
of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).

A lot can still
happen at the Democratic convention, but nothing is likely to matter as much as
Hillary Clinton’s
look and tone, what she says—or perhaps more important—what she doesn’t say as
she takes the stage Thursday night. Donald Trump, a man
of iron predictability, faced no such test last week and delivered no
surprises.

Not that there
weren’t some striking moments in the glum enterprise that concluded in
Cleveland, among them Melania Trump’s quickly famous speech. Also the
contribution of Chris
Christie, who functions periodically as the governor of New Jersey. Mr.
Christie used his speaker’s spot to conduct a lengthy mock trial of Mrs.
Clinton distinguished mainly for its unremitting tone of hysteria. It was a
spectacle many Americans may remember should Mr. Christie become, as he
apparently hopes, attorney general under Mr. Trump.

The Republican
presidential candidate has one obvious advantage over Mrs. Clinton: He has
never been in a position to absorb, as she has, the language, reflexes,
certitudes, and high principles ready to be deployed on all occasions that are
peculiar to the world of the Obama administration.

Not that Mr. Trump
isn’t capable of embracing certain of the president’s views on America, first
revealed in 2009 during Mr. Obama’s now-famous trip abroad to see heads of
state and express regret for America’s offenses, known to history as the Obama
apology tour. Those views of America as a nation in decline, virtually without
allies, emerged ever more conspicuously during the president’s first term.

Last week Mr. Trump
lashed out at NATO, then went on to argue that the U.S. shouldn’t be
interfering in the business of other nations. And that we had so many failures
of our own at home: Ferguson, the killing of police—so much. Who are we to tell
the butchers and mass murderers of the world what to do?

Unlike Mrs. Clinton,
Mr. Trump doesn’t know Obama-speak and doesn’t need deprogramming. He hasn’t
absorbed the language that Americans recognize well after eight years. They
have heard through all these years the nostrums, the reflexive high-minded
oratory, that have come with every terror attack. They can hear it all over again
in Mrs. Clinton.

Never was this
clearer than in the days following the terrorist assault in Nice, when she
described the attack as cowardly and vowed that we would never allow terrorists
to undermine our egalitarian and democratic values. Such assertions always
feel, and are, strangely off the point, which is the horror of the atrocity
that has taken place.

The notion that
terrorists are busying themselves trying to undermine our egalitarian values is
odd, especially in light of the obvious fact that what they are trying first
and foremost to do is kill us.

Mrs. Clinton, like
Mr. Obama, seems to have divined the wishes of our enemies. Not only do they
want to undermine our democratic values, they would, as she recently said of
Islamic State, “love for us to be dragged into a ground war”—a perception
highly appealing to a political administration now scarcely able to conceive of
a circumstance dire enough to warrant American ground troops.

Mr. Trump addressed
the cruel slaughter in Nice but had no more hard specifics to offer about what
might be done than Mrs. Clinton did. He nevertheless managed a tone far more
effective in its outrage—the voice of a leader in time of war. It helped, no
doubt, that he felt no need to deliver warnings about the undermining of our
democratic values.

In July alone, eight
police officers were killed in high-profile shootings—five in Dallas during a
Black Lives Matter protest and three more 10 days later in Baton Rouge. The day
after the latter killings, as stunned citizens grieved—black Americans
included, especially those who had seen in Dallas how the police officers had
rushed to protect them from sniper fire without regard to their own
safety—Hillary Clinton addressed a convention of the NAACP.

She began with a
stern, clearly heartfelt, denunciation of the killing of police, then proceeded
to her main focus—namely, a recital of the innumerable injustices visited on
black Americans by the police. It did not apparently occur to her that it might
be possible to mention to the NAACP the injustice, the fatal consequences, of
the war that had been whipped up against police by activists portraying them as
oppressors and murderers.

The planners of the
Democratic convention included on their list of honored speakers a group of
mothers—known as Mothers of The Movement—most of whose children died at the
hands of the police. There was no opportunity, however, for a speech by any
of the wives or parents of the slain police officers. The enraged officers of
Philadelphia’s police union promised not to forget this slap in the face by the
Democrats. Mrs. Clinton and company had evidently failed to grasp that
following the dictates of political expediency, otherwise known as pandering,
would in the end be more costly than doing what was right and just.

To win the election
Mrs. Clinton will have to sway voters from across the political spectrum. True,
huge portions of the electorate are appalled by the prospect of her opponent
winning the presidency, which is to her advantage. But huge numbers of
Americans are no less appalled by the possibility of a Clinton presidency that
would in effect be another Obama term. All of which is the reason Mrs. Clinton
will have to do her utmost to find a voice of her own.

She may well find one
and perhaps even something of a political backbone. Enough, at least, to ensure
that she resists pressures to move even further left than she already has to
win supporters from Bernie Sanders’s sullen troops now brooding over their lost
revolution. It will be an effort and not easy but it should hardly be too much
for the candidate who may become the first woman elected president of the
United States.

The Wall Street JournalOpinionReview &
Outlook The
Other Clinton ‘Change’No
one in Philadelphia wants to talk about the Clinton Foundation.

By Dan Henninger

Bill Clinton on
Tuesday portrayed his wife as a “change maker” whose life has overflowed with
good intentions and commitment to others. No one can spin a yarn like Bill, and
for the believers it was a touching portrait. But if it’s true, why do the
polls show that 68% of Americans don’t trust Hillary Clinton?
That has to do with the rest of the story, which is how the Clintons have
used politics to enrich themselves and retain power.

Nowhere is this
clearer than at the words you didn’t hear Mr. Clinton speak: the Clinton
Foundation. This supposedly philanthropic operation has become a metaphor
for the Clinton business model of crony politics. The foundation is about
producing a different kind of “change.”

No doubt the
foundation does some charitable good, but this is incidental to its main
purpose of promoting the Clinton political brand. Since its creation in
1997, the nominal nonprofit has served as a shadow Super Pac, designed to
keep the Clintons in the national headlines, cover their travel expenses, and
keep their retinue employed between elections.

The payroll has
included Huma Abedin, who drew a State Department salary even as she managed
politics at the foundation and is now vice-chairwoman of the Clinton campaign.
Dennis Cheng raised money for Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 bid, then became the
foundation’s chief development officer and now leads Mrs. Clinton’s 2016
fundraising. Cheryl Mills, Hillary’s chief of staff at State, sat on the
foundation board. And don’t forget Sid Blumenthal, the longtime Clinton
Svengali who was secretly advising Mrs. Clinton at State while drawing a
foundation salary. This may not be illegal but the charity here is for the
Clintons’ benefit.

The funding for this
political operation has come from nearly every country and major company in
the world. These contributors have the cover of giving to charity, when
everybody knows the gifts are political tribute to a woman determined to be
President. Donations to a charity aren’t governed by the same caps or
restrictions as those that go to a traditional Super Pac. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren
somehow overlooked this in their Monday night riffs against money in politics.

Witness the
charitably minded donors from Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.The Swiss bank
UBS gave more than $500,000 to the foundation after Secretary Clinton solved
its IRS problem. Canadian mining magnate Ian Telfer used a family charity
to donate millions to the foundation at the same time a Cabinet committee on
which Mrs. Clinton sat was reviewing (and ultimately greenlighted) a Russian
mining deal involving his company. According to the Washington Post, Bill
Clinton received $105 million for 542 speeches between January 2001 (when
he left the White House) and January 2013 (when Hillary stepped down from
State), often from companies and countries with business before State.

The foundation also
rewards Clinton friends and political allies. This newspaper reported in May
that the Clinton Global Initiative (a foundation program) directed a financial
commitment to a company, Energy Pioneer Solutions, part-owned by Clinton
friends. In 2010 Canadian tycoon Frank Giustra, a foundation donor, won the
right to cut timber in Colombia, not long after the Clintons met with
Colombia’s president.

There are no doubt
other examples we don’t know about because the Clintons have hidden foundation
details until they are exposed in the press. The foundation had to admit
that it continued to accept donations from foreign governments while Mrs.
Clinton was Secretary of State, though she had promised not to do so. The
Associated Press reported this month that the official calendar Mrs. Clinton
kept at State publicly omitted at least 75 meetings she held with “longtime
political donors, Clinton Foundation contributors, and corporate and other
outside interests.”

Keep in mind that the
Clintons did all this after their ethical travails of the 1990s and knowing
Mrs. Clinton would run for President again. It’s as if the lesson they
learned from the 1990s isn’t that they should cut fewer corners but that they can get away with anything. And maybe they can.

Wonder Land Columnist Dan Henninger on the former president’s speech at the Democratic Party convention.

About This Blog & the National Black Republican Association

Lieutenant Colonel Frances Rice, United States Army, Retired is a native of Atlanta, Georgia and retired from the Army in 1984 after 20 years of active service. She received a Bachelor of Science degree from Drury College in 1973, a Masters of Business Administration from Golden Gate University in 1976, and a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of California, Hastings College of Law in 1977.
In 2005, she became a co-founder and Chairman of the National Black Republican Association, an organization that is committed to returning African Americans to their Republican Party roots.
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Email contact: NationalBlackRepublican@Gmail.com